"Medieval" Titillium (an experiment)

michele casanova
michele casanova Posts: 19
in Type Design Critiques

In Italy, the font "Titillium" has been adopted as the standard for websites of public administration entities for several years. As an experiment for pages with historical themes (e.g. archives, museums), I'm trying to create drop caps with a medieval touch, starting from "Titillium Title".

Since these are drop caps, I’m currently using a maximum width, which explains the limitation in the width of the letter /M.

However, I’m concerned that the lines might be too rounded compared to the original "Titillium" style (in the image, the letters /I, /J, /K, /L, /S, /V, /Z have not yet been updated).

Do you have any suggestions for improvements or recommendations for sources of inspiration?



Comments

  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,442
    You might take a look at Gerard Unger's "Alverata Irregular" which took inspiration from medieval letter structures.
  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    Craig Eliason said:
    You might take a look at Gerard Unger's "Alverata Irregular" which took inspiration from medieval letter structures.
    Thanks. I'm currently looking into Weiß-Initialen and Cathédrale as well.
  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    Experiment with some creatures from late 15th century.


  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    If anyone is interested, now the experimental font for drop caps is available here.

  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Posts: 189
    For those like me who like originality, creativity in the font domain, this is wonderful!

  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    Yves Michel said:
    For those like me who like originality, creativity in the font domain, this is wonderful!

    Thanks, but I consider this just a quick experiment that could be fixed and improved in various aspects.

  • Drawcard
    Drawcard Posts: 67
    @michele casanova I like the experiment overall, but the /D is a bit confusing to me, it's too close to /O. I love the /A and /T in particular. Would be interesting to see how you interpret it in other weights as well.
  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    Drawcard said:
    @michele casanova I like the experiment overall, but the /D is a bit confusing to me, it's too close to /O. I love the /A and /T in particular. Would be interesting to see how you interpret it in other weights as well.
    Thanks. The /D is inspired by this initial by Zainer, but I understand this can be confusing.

    At the moment I don't think to consider other weights ("Titillium Title" has only one weight) but maybe I'll have some time to evaluate it.
  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    @Drawcard I changed some letters (/D /K /M /W). I think /D is a little more different from /O now.



  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    edited January 24
    @Drawcard A variable font with different weights (I'm not sure it turned out very well):




  • Craig Eliason
    Craig Eliason Posts: 1,442
    I didn’t really follow why you’re limiting the width of M (and W), but can that be reconsidered? Those too-dense letters are holding this back. 
  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    edited January 25
    Craig Eliason said:
    I didn’t really follow why you’re limiting the width of M (and W), but can that be reconsidered? Those too-dense letters are holding this back. 
    Thanks for the tip.
    The idea is to have drop caps similar to those used in the 15th century. Examining various cases (Typenrepertorium der Wiegendrucke), I saw that they were almost always limited within a square. For this reason I created monospaced drop caps with animals.
    I did a quick test leaving more space for /M and /W in the case of the drop cap without the crocodile and the hare.




    Edit: The font available on github is updated with these changes (variable font and alternative versions for M and W).

  • Drawcard
    Drawcard Posts: 67
    I like where this is going! And in context of a sentence, the /D seems a little more readable to me. I'd probably test it in words like "DOOR" however to see if people can easily distinguish it.
  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    Drawcard said:
    I like where this is going! And in context of a sentence, the /D seems a little more readable to me. I'd probably test it in words like "DOOR" however to see if people can easily distinguish it.
    The font is intended to be used only for drop caps for "Pass A38" (or "Titillium"). Here are three examples (Lorem ipsum) also using the variable font to increase the weight when the drop cap size is small.



  • Drawcard
    Drawcard Posts: 67
    I see @michele casanova - in that case I wonder if introducing a bit of a wave in the top part of the /D might help give it that medieval flavour again. 


  • michele casanova
    michele casanova Posts: 19
    edited 5:50PM
    Drawcard said:
    I see @michele casanova - in that case I wonder if introducing a bit of a wave in the top part of the /D might help give it that medieval flavour again.
    A quick test:
    EDIT: The "rabbit":

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